Tartarus
by Laurie M
Summary: Part seven in the 'Nemesis' series. Dark days and bad memories for Brenda and her lieutenant.


**DISCLAIMER: **I DO NOT OWN _THE CLOSER_ OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS - I'M JUST PLAYING WITH THEM.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** part seven in the (apparently) on-going 'Nemesis' series. I'm not quite sure that this works and it's a bit overwritten, I think, but here we go anyhow.

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**Tartarus**

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_1. Tin Man_

When she splits up the assignments it is done more by instinct than reason; she has learnt their individual strengths, she knows where each will be best suited; so when it comes to it she speaks without thinking of whom she is addressing. Until there is a gap.

Words fade and she stares at the empty desk.

'Where is Lieutenant Flynn?'

Provenza, tilting back, angles his head up to her. 'He's in court.'

'Oh. Yes. Of course.' She takes her lower lip between her teeth. Impatience wells up and she tells herself that it just isn't reasonable to feel resentful about something that's a necessary part of their work. She tells herself this every time but she is still resentful. Every time. She dislikes gaps in the squad - her squad - and it puts her off-balance, which puts the rest of them off-balance.

She resents that, too.

The briefing continues but she keeps returning to that gap at the back, worrying at it. Nothing personal, it's the same every time. Relief comes twenty minutes in when Flynn returns to them. 'How did it-' Provenza stops, biting off the sentence; he sits forward, a slight movement and a little awkward; one hand grips the arm of his chair.

Flynn doesn't look at him, doesn't look at any of them; his face is set in the white-heat of anger. He crosses the floor to the coffee pots, picks up a mug and then the pot, and finds it empty save for the few dark drops clinging to the bottom. He stands for a moment, still, stares at the liquid smeared across the bulbous glass, then slams the pot back onto the plate so hard it shatters and the squad room goes very, very quiet.

Tao turns, fingers still flexed over his keyboard and stares over the tops of his glasses.

And Flynn places the mug and the plastic handle with the jagged shards still attached on the table top, carefully, and turns, walks, bumps against Gabriel's desk, sending a stack of files tumbling, keeps walking and makes the turn by Brenda's office, out of the room.

Still quiet, the silence ringing, until someone shifts in a chair and it starts a ripple of cleared throats, whispers and scraping furniture. They look at each other, look at her and then everyone looks at Provenza. He starts to ease himself up and is stopped by Brenda's voice.

'If you'll take over the briefing, Lieutenant Provenza. Thank you.'

It's as though Flynn's rage has scored the air, cutting a path that she can follow until she finds him and she does find him, in the little alcove just past the elevator bank, staring out of the window. He grips the windowsill and his knuckles are white under the pressure.

'Lieutenant.'

She steps cautiously and he does not move; tension crackles along his spine, holding his shoulders taut.

'Lieutenant Flynn.'

'Justice system, my ass. You know, in China they just put a bullet through the scumbags' brains - and their families have to pay for the bullet. Sometimes I think they have the right idea.'

'What happened?'

He turns then and his eyes are hard, flat and far too bright. 'No jail time because he won't get the help he needs. Psychiatric hospital. He probably won't even be there three years, just take his pills, say whatever they want to hear and some doctor will sign him out. And then what? He raped a five-year old, and that little boy is going to need medical care for the rest of his life, however short that is, because that son of a bitch is HIV positive.'

Bile, scorching, rises up, the taste of it against the back of her tongue; Brenda pushes it down. The parameters of their lives are marked by the sentences that no-one wants to hear - _It's my duty to inform you; I'm sorry for your loss_ - and after a while it can become normal, easy, but every now and then something finds its way through the cracks; and then there is this; and that's when all the words over all the years seem to shatter and pierce you like glass.

'I'm sorry.' She pauses. 'Sometimes judges get it wrong-'

'Oh, well, that makes it okay then.'

'I didn't say that.'

'It was a good case. We did everything right. But he gets himself some ratbag attorney and there are continuances, two mistrials, oh and the client's _suicide_ attempt-' he draws the words out '-so it takes nearly five years to get to sentencing and the judge decides that the poor guy just never got enough love from his mom or some crap like that and time served is enough.'

She understands that kind of fury, the helplessness of it and the size of it; she knows that it has a life of its own, it has claws and teeth and tears at you, bleeding into you until everything is coloured by it. And she knows that it feels too big to be contained by her body, that it will blow her apart and she thinks - vaguely, idiotically - that he's so much taller, bigger than her that maybe he can contain it; or maybe it just means that he gets extra rage, extra hurt.

They say you're not given anything you can't handle and she wonders who _they_ are and thinks that _they_ don't know what they're talking about. Everyone, anyone can break.

Sometimes she feels the pressure against her own fractures and _not yet, not now, now, not now-_

'Do you-do you need to go ... somewhere?'

She watches the smile slip across his face - on, off - his teeth bared; tenacious, terrier-like, she's thought of him that way before but now she thinks _wolf-like_ and now he seems dangerous.

'You mean like a meeting?'

'I guess.' It is a guess, this unknown thing. 'Yes.'

The smile slips by again, his upper lip curls and his voice is soft and silken and poisonous. 'What, are you worried about me?'

She feels her face grow cold, hard, and then hot again; her chin lifts and she stares him down, holding him in her sights. 'Yes, but do I have to be?'

Her honesty is the shock that saves him, brings him back; he blinks, slowly, and the kaleidoscope shifts, rearranging his features until the man she knows is restored.

'No. No, I'm okay; I'm just mad.'

'You don't say.'

It gets a smile, just, a harsh whisper of something more familiar. Brenda releases the breath she seems to have been holding ever since that sound of breaking glass.

'Is this going to be one of those cases?'

'Don't worry, Chief, I won't be sending any flowers. I'll make it anthrax this time.'

Her lips push together, eyes flashing a warning. He raises his hands, placating, then leans back against the windowsill; his fingers curl around the edge loosely.

'What's his name? The little boy, I mean.'

'Ryan.'

'Oh,' soft. Still soft: 'I am sorry.'

'Yeah. Me too.'

Something, then, sketched around them, faint, like pencil marks on blank paper so fine that their form can't quite be made out but can be erased, wiped away in one careless gesture. But the traces, the imprint, remain.

'Well, Lieutenant, we have another case; more bad guys to catch-'

'For a judge to set free-'

She sighs. 'Lieutenant...'

His shoulders rise in what could be a shrug or the evidence of silent, humourless laughter. 'I'm done.' He pulls at the edges of his jacket, adjusting the already perfect set.

'Well then. Back to work.' And she turns.

'Hey.' He catches hold of her hand, staying her; his fingers are cold; she closes hers around his. 'Thanks.'

His hands are strong, she thinks, strong enough to hold a man by the throat and leave him with just enough air to keep him alive. She imagines his hands sliding into her hair, twisting deep into the roots, fingertips pressing against her scalp.

She smiles slightly, nods, and he lets her go.

_2. Sister Golden Hair_

Sometimes he'd drink, when he did drink, to feel numb.

Sometimes he'd drink just to feel again.

And sometimes just because he wanted to. Or needed to. Or whatever.

Funny thing was he'd never really liked it all that much.

But since then he's found other ways to handle the numb and the feeling. He puts things into the thousand-and-one tiny boxes he carries in his head and locks them down until he can deal with taking them out and looking at them. Sometimes he just leaves them in there, hoping they'll wither and sometimes they do. But sometimes they manage to crawl out, they make him look.

All day he sees Ryan's eyes, far too old in his tiny pale face, and Ryan's mother, a pretty young woman who can't quite cope with the enormity of the horror. In the hospital taking her statement then again today outside of the courtroom she had wept quietly, body hiccuping with sobs, and he had patted her back in an awkward rhythm. That gesture had found its echo when Provenza had passed his desk, wordless but landing a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezing.

Everyone else looks at him with sympathetic eyes and stays out of his way. Someone - probably Tao - takes advantage of a temporary absence from his desk and leaves a mug of coffee there, strong and only slightly sweetened just the way he likes it.

I'm not the one, he wants to tell them, I'm not the one who needs it, it's Ryan and his mother. But he accepts it graciously because, after all, he likes that they care. And also because he knows that most of the time helping the people you can help has to stand in for helping the people you want to.

But he's tired of making promises that he isn't able to keep.

_(We'll get this guy, I promise.)_

And he tries his best, always, and _all you can do is your best_ but it isn't enough-

_(I don't understand,)_

-isn't good enough.

_(you said he'd go to jail.)_

This will not be one of those cases.

He already has enough of them; each year seems to bring another he can add to his own personal collection and he doesn't have room for an extra. It won't be like that, he won't let it, it won't be like-

She sits, the chief, Brenda, breaking one of the Thou Shalt Nots by resting against the edge of Provenza's desk. Too bad the old guy isn't there, he thinks, because desecrating his space is never as much fun when he isn't around to fume over it. She sits and stares at the piece of paper taped to the wall. _Get Stroh_. Heavy black marker clumsily underlined. It's already looking shabby, one of the corners torn under the sellotape; they'll have to make up a new one. He crosses the floor, skirting the boxes that they're slowly filling ahead of the impending dreaded (mainly by the chief) move and the block of desks where Sanchez still stares at the place where Daniels used to be and joins Brenda, leans against the edge of Provenza's desk.

Also ahead of their move the air-conditioning has taken to working only intermittently, as though the building itself is in protest at their imminent abandonment of it. Windows, where possible, have been cranked open and the currents of air that battle through are themselves sluggish and not quite fresh; they add the faint whiff of heat and petrol - the smell of Los Angeles - to the dust-laden corridors and offices. It makes it seem even hotter somehow. Brenda has piled her hair up messily, exposing the sloping line of her neck and the row of fine curls at the nape.

'You know,' he starts conversationally, 'sometimes I think that back when the Founding Fathers were busy doing their founding they really screwed up with the whole innocent until proved guilty - they should have done it the other way around. Maybe then we'd have a better chance of keeping the scumbags where they belong.'

There's movement at the corners of her mouth. 'That's how they do it in France. They don't have a jury either, it's a tribunal of judges.'

'Hm.' He plays with the idea for a while then shrugs. 'They'd probably just find different ways to screw things up.'

She laughs a little and says something about him being an optimist.

And he tells her, earnest: 'That's why I read detective novels: everybody wants justice so damn much we have to make it up.'

'We get justice ... sometimes.'

'Really.'

'Don't you think so?'

'Do you?'

A sigh, long and heavy. 'I try to. I have to, otherwise I'd end up...'

'Like me?'

She turns her head and something behind her eyes shifts. 'That wouldn't be so bad.'

He frowns, making fun of himself and her. 'Are you feeling okay, Chief?'

'Apparently not.' She tilts her head back and studies him. 'How are you doing?'

'Oh, you know...'

And she nods. She knows, they all know; the shared knowledge doesn't really help but it's better than nothing.

Her gaze moves back to the paper - not just torn, it's grubby - and the breath she takes seems to shiver through her entire body. She sets her teeth on her lower-lip, bites down. 'I think maybe-' Her head moves sharply, strands of hair escaping the pins and settling on her shoulders. 'Maybe it's time-' She pulls the paper from the wall, scrunching it in her hand.

'Don't.'

For the second time that day he takes hold of her, gets her by the wrist; and he notices and not-notices the smoothness of her skin but he really notices the bone and sinew and tendon beneath it. He notices the way they shift beneath his fingers when she twists her wrist; and she doesn't try to get away she just settles there and keeps her eyes, those eyes, on him and her eyebrows rise, a silent question. He takes the paper from her hand, still holds her for a second longer, and then peels his fingers from her skin, one by one.

He smoothes it out on the desktop. 'It isn't over.' He sees it in her face and knows what the exchange would have been, what _he_ would have said to her. The hollow at the base of her throat deepens, vibrates, her eyes brightened by a sudden sheen that threatens to overflow.

'We can't get them all.'

'No, ma'am, we can't; but we can try.'

She blinks, rapid, her lips curving upward; her face is softened, blurry, a watercolour of emotions seeping into each other. The back of her hand brushes across her cheek and she slips off the desk; he watches her walk across the squad room and-

_(We'll get this guy, I promise.)_

-he'll make room for this one.

Provenza comes back in, walking heavily like always, and stops in the doorway.

'Get your ass off my desk.'

_3. Lonely People _

She doesn't spend her nights in front of the TV because she actually watches it - face it, there's nothing on that she'd want to watch. It's something she can do that she doesn't have to think about. Mainly she watches the infomercials, the ones where you can buy a set of knives that can cut through tin cans; or pens that can write even when they're upside down. And they can also cut through tin cans. She wonders why anyone would want to stab a tin can with a pen, but then it takes all sorts. A pen that strong it's astonishing that no-one has used one to stab another person; or maybe they have; nothing would really surprise her anymore.

Her eyes are heavy but she doesn't feel sleepy- No, she doesn't feel like sleeping- No. She needs, wants, sleep but it's stopped being something she welcomes and started being something she fears.

She does not feel like moving. A wine-glass, empty, and a bowl of popcorn still half-full on the table. She peels herself off the sofa and collects the detritus of her night's unwinding and the kitchen seems far, very far, away. She starts through the house, not bothering with lights; her shoes greet her en route. She wedges the bowl under her arm, retrieves her shoes and places them neatly under the table. Pieces of popcorn spill out of the bowl and she mutters under her breath words that she wouldn't say out loud. She puts everything down, picks them up, drops them back into the bowl except for the one piece that she pops into her mouth and sucks on the saltiness. For all her cravings for sweet things she has never liked sweet popcorn. When she straightens up again her muscles scream with the exhaustion for which even the slightest exertion is too much.

In the kitchen she rinses out the glass, empties the bowl into the bin, puts the dishes into the sink, grips the edge of the countertop, braces herself against it. Her fingers rest against the sink's aluminium rim, cold to the touch. There's a prickle behind her eyes and she holds them wide, willing it away and a sudden shadow moves behind her and her stomach lurches and she can feel every agonising beat that her heart does not take.

She turns, staggers, and Joel chases a patch of moonlight across the floor.

Her mouth is so dry that when she tries to open it her lips stick together. She tries to swallow and it sticks against the tightness in her throat. And it's always the same, each time, the fear, and with it come the memories that catch her like a blow, wind her and she feels it, again, electricity racing up her spine; her finger tight on the trigger; glass shattering above her, the smell of blood and metal and the screams that might have been hers and she would still swear that there had only been five shots; pulling the trigger and those had been the five. She concentrates on her heartbeat, trying to slow its wildness; she tells herself to breath, thinking about the air filling up her lungs, expanding behind her ribs, and she tries to ignore the tiny terrified voice in her head saying_ ohgodohgodohgodohgod..._ She decides to centre herself on something steady, something she can trust, and stares at her hands and they are shaking.

Joel presses himself against her, arching his back against her legs, the fur on the back of his neck bristling. She grabs him up, holding him against her cheek, feeling the warmth and hearing the regular _thrum-thrum-thrum_ of his heart; she holds him so tight he twists in her hands, claws flexing, and escapes her grasp, landing lightly on the floor, a pale streak out of the door. He'll curl himself up on their bed, beside Fritz. She doesn't follow him. She uses the table top and the backs of chairs and makes her way back to the safety of the sofa and the flickering blue-white light and the thing about her hands is that they are still shaking.

It doesn't seem to be a conscious decision - at least, it is not one that she remembers making - but she picks up her cellphone, writes and sends the message before she can think about it.

_Are you still awake?_

She doesn't expect a response really but a little under a minute and-

_No._

_Very funny._

_Get some sleep._ Then: _Goodnight, Chief._

When Fritz comes through the slate-grey of early morning light is augmented by the flickering from the television. He switches it off, replaces the remote in the dish on the table and watches the figure curled on the sofa. He should wake her, he thinks, tell her to go to bed, bends over her then stops. In the dim half-light it looks as though she is smiling slightly. Pleasant dreams, for once. He pulls the blanket up over her shoulders and leaves her.

**FIN**


End file.
